Lakewood Ranch Gymnastics owners Laura and David Parraga have learned a lot of about the twists and turns in Small Business Administration financing.

The Parragas are about to open a new, 18,000-square-foot studio, financed with a $1.8 million SBA loan, and while Laura Parraga admits she had some trepidation about the SBA process, “It ended up being unbelievably fast and easy,” she said. “I never thought a business that was new and sports-related would be considered but this is just the kind of business they are looking for.”

Lakewood Ranch Gymnastics was “one of the neatest transactions I’ve been involved in,” said Bryan Boudreaux, vice president and business banking relationship manager at Regions Bank. Regions worked with Florida Business Development Corp. to fund the loan.

The story is a compelling one, and in it there are nuggets of information any small business can learn from in successfully seeking small business financing.

Laura Parraga, a gymnastics coach for 22 years, met David Parraga, a world champion from Venezuela, in 1999. They started coaching together, dated and got married. They ran a program in Pinellas County for 10 years, then opened their own business, Lakewood Ranch Gymnastics, in September 2011, in rented space, sharing a site with C&H Baseball Inc.

In the spring of 2011, before the studio opened, the Parragas sought a small startup loan of about $50,000, but were turned down, so they figured out a way to launch the business on their own, using savings and borrowing from family.

“In a way it was good we weren’t given the money then. It made us penny pinch,” Parraga said. “Now we don’t have any debt.”

Meanwhile, demand for the high-level gymnastics they coach has swelled. “We quickly grew out of the space,” Parraga said. The 10,000-square-foot studio hosts classes for 750 students every week.

“They were a growing business that needed to acquire their own building,” said Hoyt Prindle III, assistant vice president at Florida Business Development. “We came together with Regions to provide the financing to build a new facility which should provide the size they need to accommodate demand.”

One challenge was the nature of the business. A gymnastics studio does not product a tangible product, and if something were to happen to the Parragas, it might impact the service, said Boudreaux, who met the couple soon after they opened the studio and a deposit account at a Regions Bank branch.

“I stayed in touch. When they had a year’s worth of tax returns, a wait list of a couple hundred students and were at capacity, that’s when I knew I could help them,” he said.

The Parragas got a 504 loan, the SBA’s designation for loans used to finance the purchase of fixed assets, which usually means real estate, buildings and machinery.

“The first thing we look at is what kind of cash flow do they have. Can the business operations support the servicing of debt of a new facility?” Prindle said “Regions brought them to us because they were still a young business, only two years old, and a bank like Regions wants to see more cash flow. When they opened, the business wouldn’t provide sufficient cash flow, but the trend line was good and they had great revenue growth over the period.”

Another factor in the Parragas’ favor was demographics. Location is everything for certain businesses, Boudreaux said. Laura Parraga said she looked for sites with mostly single-family homes, indicating a lot of young children. The clincher was the construction of a new McDonald’s. “That tells me there’s kids around.”

While Boudreaux initially suggested Parraga find cheaper dirt, she insisted on being in Lakewood Ranch, and she was right, the banker now concedes. “When we talk about Lakewood Ranch, people in Birmingham [corporate headquarters for Regions Financial Inc. (NYSE: RF)] don’t know what it is and how it’s growing — explosive growth with a focus on sports and medicine, industries rapidly growing in Florida.”

The entire SBA process, start to close, took about 10 to 12 weeks, Parraga said. Speed is essential to the success of SBA lending, with all documentation done electronically, Prindle said. “We understand that if people have a bad impression they won’t use the program again and will tell others not to. We want to make things fast and smooth for the business owner.”

A great banker and a great certified public accountant, Michelle Sands, helped. “We put them in touch with each other, and it made it easy,” Parraga said. She also worked closely with real estate attorney Christa Folkers.

“When I got this team together and they could have conversations with each other about stuff I didn’t know or didn’t understand, then I could focus on growing my business,” Parraga said.

The SBA 504 program has recently undergone two changes, Prindle said. The SBA is eliminating the personal resources test, so individuals who have a lot of cash and might otherwise have been ineligible for SBA financing now could qualify. Another change is the nine-month rule: previously the SBA wouldn’t allow costs associated with a project that were more than nine months old, but now there’s no time limit, so long as the costs can be property attributed.

The upshot should be more SBA funding, which pleases Prindle. “I always enjoy driving by a building and saying we helped build that.”

Lakewood Ranch’s steps to success

Patience: David and Laura Parraga opened their business with savings and money borrowed from family, then were debt-free when they sought a SBA loan to expand.

Records: Regions Bank wanted to see a year’s worth of tax returns and Florida Business Development Corp. wanted to know if cash flow could support debt service for the new building.

Demographics: The Parragas knew they had to be in a location with a lot of young children who were potential students, and the Lakewood Ranch area is experiencing “explosive growth.”

Teamwork: A team made up of bankers, an accountant and a real estate attorney worked together, allowing the Parragas to focus on their business.